Seems that if your wireless has AES... which I am learning about this week, then you are OK. WPA2, the third generation systems is still uncrackable... for now... as well. One person reccommends using MAC, so I am looking that up now.
But here's my question: How close to the wireless product does the attacker need to be? Should I look for suspicious cars driving the neighborhood, or see who is sitting next me at Micky D's? Today, with almost every coffee house, library, or building having Wi-Fi accessibility, this seems to provide a very high risk for getting attacked. I don't really carry sensitive data on my IPOD Touch, etc, but perhaps I should look to see if there are files that aren't mine on it.... or would I even be able to 'see' them?
This seems pretty scary to me.
WPA2 has been bundled with wireless equipment since 2006. Just change your security to that or change your WPA encryption from TKIP to AES; both can be changed from your routers security settings.
ReplyDeleteIn order to connect to your network, I'd have to be in range of it. It would be impossible for me to hack it from across town since your signal range wouldn't reach me; I wouldn't even know its name.
Public places are where the real risk may be. Corporate spies may hang out at Starbucks and nab juicy information you're sending through that network and sell it to the highest bidder.
I wouldn't be worried. I avoid connecting to public networks unless I absolutely have to. At home, I set a MAC filter on top of my WPA with AES encryption and hid my Wireless ID so that no one can connect to it unless I allow them in.
Like the Mr. Porier says, doors on the submarine. Don't just rely on having a good password.
A MAC address is a "name" unique to each and every network device in the word. No two devices have the same MAC (unless you spoof it, but that's for another time). On your router, you can allow only certain MACs access to your network, so even if Hacker A cracks your password, he wouldn't even be able to get in because his MAC is not one of the allowed MACs on the router.
What I find interesting in this article http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/147906 is that the Researchers figured it out. So I think that there are other people, besides the Researchers, that have already known about this. What we believe to be secure today may already be vulnerable, but we won't find out until tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI also question the MAC address being unique to each and every network in the world. I googled duplicate mac addresses and came up with a slew of articles. This actually did happen to my computer at work one time. It was the topic of dicussion for the week with the network techs.
While the MAC addresses themselves are unique for each and every networking device, they can be spoofed, or changed. If a hacker was able to find my MAC address exception list, he could change his card's MAC address to one on my list and be allowed onto the network once he gets through my password.
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